A variety of known configuration management platforms exist which permit a systems administrator or other user to interrogate, inventory, and/or install or update configurations of machines in a network. The configuration management platform may, for instance, communicate with one or more targets or other machines in a network to check and update the set of network services, installed software applications, memory or storage resources, or other resources configured on that set of machines.
When performing configuration management operations, the configuration management server and related logic of known platforms can update or install a configuration to a target machine using scripts or other messaging or code to access, identify, and/or install or update desired configuration settings. Various security and/or integrity checks can be performed as part of known processes to ensure that the selected configuration changes are effected. However, existing configuration management platforms do not incorporate a capability to verify the resulting operational effects, once a configuration update is completed. That is, while a desired configuration change, such as a change to a library on a target machine, can be carried out, in cases that configuration event can trigger a set of unintended or unexpected consequences. For instance, once the library is updated, the target machine may have an associated service turned off that was previously operating, for instance, due to faulty or malicious code that was part of the configuration chance. Other effects, such as a change in memory or storage allocation, can occur which indicate a configuration fault that exists as a result of the configuration update.
It may be desirable to provide systems and methods for testing results of configuration management activity, in which not merely a desired configuration setting, but potential ensuing configuration faults and/or other conditions that result from that activity can flagged and identified for correction or other treatment.